If you're tired of hearing about how far our public schools lag behind other nations in math and science, get ready for something completely different.

Today we'll meet a couple of high school students who will probably have to dumb down their ideas a lot just for me to understand them. One of them maps proteins. The other works on computational models having to do with the production of hydrogen. Or something. We'll also talk to author Judy Dutton who collected a series of often-astonishing stories of kids who, despite circumstances of educational impoverishment -- incarceration in a youth prison in one case and a hardscrabble Navajo reservation life in another -- created impressive projects. The prison kid accurately predicted the location of water on Mars. The Navajo kid built a solar heater out of junkyard parts. The geeks will inherit the earth. Or maybe that already happened. Leave your comments below, e-mail colin@wnpr.org or Tweet us @wnprcolin. ***This episode was produced by Tucker Ives***